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(Before starting, look at part 18 of our Old Highway 395 exhibit for some views of the highway leading up to this stretch, including some views I don't include here for reasons of repetition. It will open up in a new window.)
As we note in the Old Highway 395 section, US 395 was cut down in 1969 to this rather inauspicious terminus with the rise of Interstate 15. Ever since then it begins here in San Bernardino county and the city of Hesperia, a moderate-sized town of 62,582 [2000], and so do we begin our journey here upon our now 1,305-mile trek to the Canadian border. Buckle up, buttercup. Let's grab the gas card, iBook, camera and hotel reservations, and hit the 'phalt.
San Bernardino county is California's largest county, named for the Catholic St. Bernardine of Siena, and has its county seat in San Bernardino. Rather than reiterate and review the city and county, you can see and read about it in Parts 15 through 18 of the Old Highway 395 exhibit. US 395 in San Bernardino county has not changed a great deal from its old alignment otherwise. Aside from straightening and widening in the Victorville city limits during the 1980s-90s and an early bypass of Adelanto completed in the late 1950s, most of the road is still along its original course. Within San Bernardino county, north of Adelanto, it is primarily one-lane-per-direction with a "divided highway" no-pass section for an interminable 15-plus miles due to poor visibility over the local terrain. This serious traffic bottleneck cries out for upgrade and/or realignment, but an attempt by the San Bernardino Associated Governments to identify a new corridor failed even before the environmental impact report was completed in 2007. Caltrans and SANBAG are still considering alternative options. For now, the 395 "No-Pass" zone remains in place, with plans for capacity and safety upgrades to the existing highway instead.
In highway history, Kramer Jct in San Bernardino county is where US 395 meets old US 466, modern-day CA 58. US 466 was first designated from Morro Bay, CA on the Central Coast (where CA 41 is now) to Barstow, CA. It was then lengthened in 1933 to Kingman, AZ, mostly along then-US 91 and US 93. With the appearance of Interstate 15, it was truncated to Baker, CA after the Great Renumbering (more or less at the junction of CA 127) and replaced by CA 41 from Morro Bay to Paso Robles, US 101 in Paso Robles (with which it had been previously co-routed), CA 46 from Paso Robles to CA 99, CA 99 (old US 99) in Bakersfield (with which it had also been co-routed), CA 58 to Barstow and finally I-15 from Barstow to Baker; it was then truncated to Boulder City, NV in 1969, and finally decommissioned completely in 1971. Some of US 466's old routing in Las Vegas, NV and its modern remnants can be seen in our US 95 exhibit, parts 2 and 3. We'll examine Kramer Junction in more detail in this Part.
Before the signage and designation of US 395 in California, the portion that
is US 395 now was originally signed as CA 95 in 1934 as part of the initial
signage of state highways (not US
95) from here to Brown near the Inyo county line. We will reach that point
in Part 2.
For historical purposes, since we are starting in California, I will mention
US 395's old Legislative Route Numbers only parenthetically. LRNs were the
former method of mileage and state route accounting in California before the
Great Renumbering of 1964;
Dan Faigin's
US 395 entry lists
US 395's old component LRNs in some detail with some additional information
about their history and is strongly recommended reading. Nevertheless, for
the sake of completeness,
modern US 395 follows the following former LRNs during this first
entry into California (sometimes only
approximately): LRN 145 (Hesperia to Inyokern, 1933), LRN 23 (Inyokern to
Topaz Lake, 1909), LRN 95 (Topaz Lake to state line, 1933). LRN 23 was
originally signed CA 7, and partially carried US 6 as well (see
Part 2 and Part 5).
For the former LRNs in
use on Old US 395, please see Old Highway 395. For the
former LRNs in use on US 395's second routing in California, skip ahead to
Part 15.
Approaching the exit to US 395 on NB Interstate
15, which is its inheritor south of
this point except for I-215 through Riverside and San Bernardino (both of
which you can see in Part 18
of the Old Highway 395 exhibit). This is
roughly the course of old US 66/US 91/US 395, all of which were signed
together on this routing (see that same Part for an old and still extant
alignment).
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Exiting onto the terminus, with new signage erected only a few years ago.
This interchange was first constructed as part of the Interstate 15 project
in 1964 when I-15 was replacing old US 91 and has been minimally upgraded
otherwise. The old fork off US 66/US 91 survives as Outpost Rd west of I-15,
and is today discontinuous.
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Crossing the interchange. As demonstrated in Part
18 of the Old Hwy exhibit,
postmiles on US 395 in San Bernardino county actually start at PM 4.0. One
of those postmiles is in Part 18 for your review.
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Coming off the interstate, we immediately come to this intersection. This
is approximately the point at which old US 66 and US 91 diverged to the
northeast, and US 395 to the northwest.
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First trailblazer shield, on the turn-off from Joshua St, which is the approach
to US 395 from SB I-15.
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Three Flags Rd isn't much of a road, but hey, we have to make note of it.
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First reassurance shield.
Because of its high traffic volumes, frequent passing and narrow alignments
causing a higher than normal collision rate,
US 395 is part of a California Highway Patrol "safety corridor" with
additional safety studies and CHP enforcement patrols.
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Part of the safety recommendations include designation of US 395 up to
Atolia/Red Mountain as a Daylight Headlight Section.
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Distance signage. For some reason the control city
Bishop isn't listed here, presumably
due to the greater proportion of local traffic on the southern end.
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Between its terminus in Hesperia and Victorville, US 395 goes through a
number of small gorges and a number of at-grade traffic signals.
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Turn-off to Phelan, leaving Hesperia.
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PM 6.
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The Victorville
city limits heralded by
a portion of the California Aqueduct, part of the California State Water
Project inaugurated in 1960 by then-Governor Edmund G. "Pat" Brown.
The California Aqueduct is the major main-line conduit for the
project, running from the Sacramento River delta in Northern California
south through the San Joaquin Valley and over the summit of the
Tehachapi range, where it divides into east and west branches. This is
part of the east branch, of course. Due to Governor Brown's significant
involvement in its creation, the Aqueduct is now properly known as the
Edmund G. Brown California Aqueduct in his honour.
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Fishing in the Aqueduct does seem a mite risky ...
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... especially with the current the way it is sometimes.
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We really don't see much of Victorville along US 395; most of it is further
east along old US 66 and US 91, now I-15. Victorville was originally named
just plain Victor, after Jacob Nash Victor, superintendent of the California
Southern Railroad, in 1885. To avoid confusion with Victor, CO, it was changed
in 1901 by the US Postal Service.
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Victorville and its surrounding "suburbs," particularly Apple Valley, Phelan
and Hesperia, are exploding. Nestled in the Victor Valley (of the same name
derivation), it has swelled from a sleepy desert town to a moderately bustling
city of 64,029 [2000]. This was greatly assisted by the appearance of US 66
in 1926, which survives in the downtown as modern Seventh St, and Victorville
Army Airfield in 1942, which became George Air Force Base (decommissioned
1992, now Southern California Logistics Airport -- we'll see that when we
get into Adelanto). The modern city was incorporated in 1962.
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Our first highway junction is with
CA 18, a strange and sinuous highway running from San Bernardino
in the south (see our CA 30-CA 18-CA 259
exhibit for its southern terminus and some of its old routings), up and
around Lake Arrowhead, then Big Bear Lake, then into the Apple Valley
region, across I-15 (along which it is briefly co-routed), then to this
junction and finally to its western terminus with CA 138. Interestingly, CA
18 returns the favor by forming CA 138's eastern end east of Silverwood
Lake in a perilous trumpet interchange clinging to the mountain range.
The famous green California shield is a stylized miner's spade, for those
unfamiliar with the state highway system.
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Distance signage leaving Victorville.
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PM 12.
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Entering the City of Adelanto.
Adelanto is a town trying to hold it together, today a
relatively wan 18,130 [2000]. Named for the Spanish word for progress, it
had brighter days when the air base was more bustling, but So Cal Logistics
is nowhere near the hub that George AFB was and the local economy has
suffered as a result after the Air Force left town.
The modern city was incorporated in 1970.
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US 395 originally went through what was "downtown" Adelanto, using a hard
right turn which added about
a mile onto the route. In 1955, just after the left map inset was published,
it was shifted to a shorter diagonal
bypass routing which it remains on today. We'll do the first of our forked
alignments (a common theme you will see throughout this entire photoessay)
and demonstrate both old US 395 and new US 395.
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Fork 1: Old US 395 in Adelanto Separation. We continue straight, becoming Adelanto Rd. Entire original image (93.1KB) |
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Adelanto Rd is not very well maintained today, most of the budget going to
mainline 395.
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Maverick Stadium, the local minor league ballpark for the High Desert
Mavericks (single-A, California League). It is very new and apparently
people find it very comfortable based on a few minor league enthusiast
sites I looked at,
but the heat must be absolutely oppressive during the summer and there
appears to be no outdoor cooling system.
LF and RF are 340' with CF at 401', and the current capacity is 3,808.
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Turning into the city.
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Air Expressway (remember this road) and about as much local business as you
will see along old 395 despite Adelanto Rd being the main drag in the past.
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North of Air Expwy, it's mostly just houses to the left, ...
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... and So Cal Logistics to the right. However, this abandoned gutted jetframe
pretty much succinctly sums up SCLA.
Despite the federal government's promise to help the Victor
Valley recover from the economic loss of George AFB's closure, ironically
SCLA's biggest customer is still the military: in this case the Army, which
uses it as a transport base for Fort Irwin, and Company D of the 158th
Aviation Regiment, which uses the field under contract. Although attempts
to foster commercial traffic were repeatedly made, including lengthening
runways and receiving special designation
as a Foreign Trade Zone by the US Department of Commerce, the airport
remains underutilized and the economic impact rough.
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Old US 395 then turns back west along Chamberlaine Way. Very little has changed
between when this really was US 395 and today as shown in the 1952 picture
at right (click for a 67K enlargement). Notice the little 395 shield in the
background, the flashing light (gone now, replaced with a stop sign) and the
signage at right, with reflectors in the large black ADELANTO 1 sign.
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This section is just a residential street now. Mind the dips, as some are
pretty deep.
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Back to mainline 395.
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Fork 2: Modern US 395
Rewinding back to the US 395/Adelanto Rd split, we now follow modern US 395 along the later bypass. Entire original image (107.3KB) |
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Often there can be snow on the mountains well into early summer.
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The punishing heat in the High Desert can be used for, well, punishment. One
linchpin of the local economy is the clink, here the local prisons, but also
including the Victorville [sic] Federal Correctional Complex slightly
north along Air Expwy.
This United States penitentiary is divided into two medium-security facilities
and one high-security facility, and I recommend you see them from the outside
and not the inside.
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Air Expwy, this time from modern US 395. FCC Victorville is west of this point.
Notice the dangling four way stop. Instead of a proper traffic light like Adelanto Rd has, mainline US 395 has simply a blinking red, yielding an unacceptable long line of cars during rush hour waiting to get through. This section is currently in the process of being widened as of this writing, and at last they will finally get rid of the four-way stop when the job is done with a proper traffic light. Entire original image (118.9KB) |
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City Hall, just west of US 395 on Air Expwy. Adelanto for some reason has
double names for some streets.
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Bartlett Avenue and the Adelanto PD sitting right along the road,
who will write you tickets if you bust the 50mph speed limit.
Notice the funny gap on the Adelanto Business District sign -- there used to be an arrow there pointing to the right and old US 395 on Adelanto Rd. Today, what businesses there are are now mostly bordering modern US 395 instead. Entire original image (108.4KB) |
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Chamberlaine Way, rejoining our old routing.
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Distance signage leaving town.
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PM 18.
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Racetown 395, a local motorcross course, always amuses me watching kids grab
air on dirt bikes. I'd make a lot of money off them if I were an orthopedist.
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NO PASS ZONE And now to one of US 395's most annoying sections in San Bernardino county, the no-pass block. This is single-lane-per-direction, no passing, for 15 miles (actually longer, but a passing lane will appear after this first block even though passing over the centre line is still forbidden) due to poor visibility over the ripply terrain. This particular bottleneck can be quite aggravating when stuck behind a truck. Entire original image (95.6KB) |
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Case in point, notice these poor schlubs heading south with the semis holding
them to 55.
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No Passing triangle. I make a point of photographing these in California when
I see them; they're not rare but not particularly common, either.
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Rumble strip in the no-pass centre stripe.
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Adelanto PD and CHP trade enforcement zones several times north of the city.
I still wouldn't speed here either. They've got nothing better to do if
they're parked out here with the radar on.
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PM 22.0. This is actually as good as road visibility gets, to illustrate the
rationale for the no-pass zone.
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Reminding you about the daylight headlight section.
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Turn-off for Shadow Mountain Rd, the only junction of consequence.
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Shadow Mtn Rd heads to the Silver Lakes near Helendale, north of Victorville,
terminating at the National Trails Hwy (old US 66/US 91). The Silver Lakes
are part of the very strange Mojave River, which flows underground and
inland instead of above ground and towards the sea. Originating in the San
Bernardino Mountains, it dives underground, surfacing in the Narrows near
Victorville and Apple Valley,
then back under again appearing at intervals until it finally
fades in Soda Lake near Baker deep within the central Mojave Desert.
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Distance signage.
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NB US 395.
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Finally, a passing zone!
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But as the southbound schleps are finding out, it's just not long enough
to get past that one last truck.
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Who left these Dips in the dip di dip di dip?
Who was that man? I'd like to kick his #$%@. He made this road a living
breathing hell.
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END NO PASS ZONE At long last, the end of the No-Pass Zone! Entire original image (119.4KB) |
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PM 34.
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Getting closer to Kramer Jct.
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This section of US 395 is actually designated as a freeway by the state
legislature. No, stop laughing. I'm serious.
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Passing lane on the upgrade over the hills.
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Crossing the "summit" of sorts towards Kramer Jct.
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The desert view from the summit is beautiful on clear days.
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A few Joshua trees dot the terrain.
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Coming down into the valley.
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PM 43.
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Are your headlights on?
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Jct
CA 58 and Kramer Junction. CA 58 is, as we mentioned, old US 466 (see map at
the lower right in the introductory blurb). It has largely been
realigned along full freeway between Bakersfield and Barstow
and for heavy traffic, can be used as a longer
bypass through to San Bernardino (head east into Barstow and then south
on I-15 from there). Just outside Barstow,
CA 58 has been realigned into freeway and has grade-separated interchanges
into its terminus with I-15; the old alignment is signed as Old Hwy 58.
CA 58 did not exist until the Great Renumbering, when it was created and numbered based on its old Legislative Route Number out of the pieces of US 466 that carried that LRN. It also took over CA 178 between US 101 near Santa Margarita and CA 99 (old US 99) in Bakersfield, all of which was also LRN 58 despite being CA 178 in the initial signage of California state routes. Entire original image (152.5KB) |
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CA 58 is a persistent candidate for upgrade between the San Bernardino-Kern
county line and Barstow, and one of those upgrades is to completely bypass
Kramer Jct with a freeway. Part of the project undoubtedly would be to
eliminate US 395's at-grade junction with the railroad, which if you are
unlucky, leads to five minutes of this typical scene.
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As we cross the railroad tracks, note the kilometre distance sign. Kramer Jct
was originally just plain Kramer, and was first established as a stop along
the Santa Fe Railroad. The sign is now gone, but I adore button copy, so I'm
still using this older 2005 photograph.
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This antique shop, complete with button copy that looks like it was stolen
en bloc off a sign somewhere, has a number of charming pieces of road
paraphernalia, signs and collectables. Check into it if you're in the area.
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One sign they will not sell -- and believe me, I ask every time I
come by -- is this weatherbeaten but fascinating old-style US 395 shield
hanging up under the patio because the proprietress informed me they collect
US 395 memorabilia too. I'll keep trying, though.
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They also won't sell this beautiful porcelain enamel US 395,
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this porcelain enamel US 466 with reflectors,
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or this really fun button copy shield they have nestled on the top shelf.
All of these are in their workshed, which they invited me to investigate
when I was looking at their other signs (some of which they do indeed sell).
They have a number of nice replica US 395 and ACSC signs, some complete with
aging and a convincing fake patina, which I highly recommend for the casual
collector.
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Distance signage leaving Kramer Jct.
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Coming up on the solar farm, a notable landmark on this stretch.
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The Mojave region is riddled with several of these solar power plants, taking
advantage of the abundant and often brutal sunshine and rare cloud cover.
In the present day, however, they still contribute only a small portion of the
region's total energy demands; nevertheless, that's a portion that doesn't
have to come from oil or coal, so every little bit helps.
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America's newest US highway, US 359.
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Curving up the hills. In the distance you can see one of the radio towers
that dot this region.
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Several larger installations are also present, ...
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including this particular FAA installation, the Boron SSC/SSU.
(Boron is to the west along CA 58.)
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NB US 395.
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The road gets a little windy-er as we get further
north towards the old mining communities. More about them in a bit.
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Turn-off for Twenty Mule Team Parkway and
California City. US 395 doesn't go really anywhere near California
City, but the story is interesting, so I'll tell it. California City was
originally founded in a practically uninhabited area with its only main
feature being the historic borax haul along the Twenty Mule Team Trail (hence
the name) to the railroad in Mojave from the eastern mining operations.
Although Padre Francisco Garces had camped nearby during his 1776 expedition,
no one, not even Native Americans, had a significant presence in the region
until developer Nat Mendelsohn purchased nearly 80,000 acres in 1958 with
the aim of creating a master planned community. Mendelsohn was also a
sociologist, and put his training to work designing a model city with a 26
acre artificial lake and a central greenspace from which a precise road grid
led out into residential blocks he confidently expected would fill up with
inhabitants.
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Unfortunately, Mendelsohn's sociology training had ill-prepared him for
the realization that people don't really like living in the middle of a blast
furnace miles from nowhere, and most of Mendelsohn's roads and civic network
crumbled from disuse. Although the city has a population of nearly 9,000 today,
it is a far cry from its magnificient intentions.
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PM 65.
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At PM 66.0 is a momument sign for CHP Officer Larry J. Jaramillo,
who died in the line of duty in a traffic
collision near the Kern county line while
returning from court in Inyo county to the north. Officer Jaramillo was
a decorated officer, receiving the CHP's second highest honour for rescuing
two young men in the Kern county mountains in hazardous weather. His
tragic death was only a year later in 1993.
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Here our daylight headlight section ends, but I'd keep them on anyway.
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The road here is quite a bit less busy than at the southern end of the county.
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At the northern end of San Bernardino county is this chain of old, dead or
shrunken
mining towns. The Rand gold district, as this area is known and named for
the similarly mineral-rich region of South Africa, sprang into
bustling action when gold was struck in the El Paso mountain range's
Goler Wash some
fifteen miles west in 1893, reaching its peak during the 1930s with a
total output of some $20 million.
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First is the
uninhabited Atolia, as in, "Honey, atolia we shouldn't
have moved here!" Atolia Hill was the site of the region's first tungsten
strikes in 1905,
named as a contraction of two mining company officials, Atkins and DeGolia.
Although
a major source of the precious ore during the World Wars and the Korean War,
once the tungsten disappeared, so did the population.
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Fair warning on one of the many dirt turn-offs in this region.
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Red Mountain is somewhat less lifeless, although it mostly remains only as a
residential community that inhabited what was left of the dying mine and
environs. This is a shame, because Red Mountain was the site of the
Olympus, later the Yellow Aster Mine, where gold was discovered in 1895.
This launched a major regional exploration stretching north where gold and
silver were regularly mined well into the 1940s. Almost $12 million came
out of the shafts of the Yellow Aster, some as deep as 1200', but the nearby
Kelly Mine produced over double that in silver until the price plummeted and
the mine was no longer profitable.
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One of the mills in Osdick
(as Red Mountain was first known, named for one of the early prospectors
in the region, later changed by the US Post Office) in 1901. Typically, the
capacity of such mills were measured in stamps; each stamp
was responsible for crushing ore and Osdick's largest mill had a total of
ten sets of ten
pestles each for what was then an enormous processing capacity. That
large mill seems to
have had later upgrades for its even larger output during the
1930s, but has not seen industrial action since then. Most of the rest of
the infrastructure burned down in 1969 when vandals set fire to the remnants.
This particular mill seems to have suffered an analogous fate.
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Similarly, much of the town at large has been left to rot, or in this case,
turned into domiciles. Unbelievably, some buildings are still in
use in their original capacity, including the terribly dilapidated general
store. One function that has (probably) not survived is the local commercial
sex trade; we presume that Red Mountain's well-known brothels do not operate
in the modern light of day.
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First major turn-off to Trona. Trona is one of the less typical mining
town stories in the Mojave, established in 1913 to mine borax from the dry
lake (in this case, the Searles) in which it nestles by the American Trona
Company, the then-most recent in a string of speculators stretching to
1862 and John Searles himself, a gold prospector who didn't realize the
value of the crystals he'd discovered in the desert until almost ten years
later. Trona was established as a planned community for the local workers
and support staff, with services and amenities operated by American Trona
in a classic company-town format.
However, Searles Dry Lake turned out to have a lot more unusual
chemistry in it than the borax chemists could have ever expected.
Though unable to wrest from the lake more borax than what laid on
the surface due to the expensive extraction method needed, American Trona
discovered that there was even more money to be had in potash extraction
after the German embargo on potash fertilizer (i.e., potassium carbonate)
during World War I.
Producing tens of thousands of tonnes a year, the suddenly profitable
American Trona was an attractive
target for investors and was bought out by the newly formed American Potash
and Chemical Corporation in 1926. Immense commercial development ensued over
the next 30 years until a series of mergers culminated in AP&C's
purchase by Kerr-McGee, which operated and opened additional plants, including
the 1978 Argus soda ash plant, well into the 1980s. This plant is now owned
by IMC Global and remains in operation, along with salt-extraction operations
and a nearby lime quarry. No small amount of local distaste remains for the
few corporations that maintain local mining concessions, and there is an
undercurrent of resentment that the town has been in some fashion abandoned
to entropy by the mining industry that built it.
Trona Pinnacles is the area's local tourist attraction, a collection of tufa stone pinnacles around what remains of the dry Searles Lake formed much the same way as Mono Lake's (Part 8). Entire original image (107.5KB) |
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The "limit" sign for Johannesburg stands in San Bernardino county, despite
the majority of the town being in Kern. (We'll get to this "good jerky"
in a little while.)
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So, for that reason, we'll cross the Kern county line to talk about it.
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Last mile count for San Bernardino county.
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